Welcome to the People Against My Circle Foundation, or as I like to call it, the People Against My Circle Foundation. My attorney's the one who convinced me, against my better judgment, to put that more "user-friendly" acronym at the top, as it allegedly will bring more people to my site. Personally, I feel having it there severely undermines my other pending case against the ever-encroaching Acronym Industry via my other group, Americans Against Appalling Acronymization, but since I'm paying him $387 a minute, I will defer to his alleged lawyerly wisdom. But I digress.

If you are here, then you probably are in exactly the same boat I am, perturbed by a gross miscarriage of justice, and you probably are seething with rage right now. That big vein in your forehead is throbbing. Your teeth are gnashing like they've never gnashed before. Your hands are clenched, fingers digging into the arms of your chair so hard that your nurse must spend almost an hour digging splinters from beneath your nails before giving you your sponge bath and castor oil rubdown.

Well don't worry, because you are now among "friends."* And if you're like me, friend, you feel that there are just certain things that friends don't do to other friends. Like add them to their "My Circle" plan without their consent. Oh, you may be thinking, "But Mr. Von Houten, sir, a circle is a wonderful thing, 360 degrees of curvy goodness, surely there's no harm in being added to someone's Circle!" If you are thinking this, please go and slap your mother in the face** for raising such an idiot. Done? Good. Now imagine this scenario:

Some smarmy little weasel you know--let's call him "Thad"--has to pay every time he calls you from his cell phone. Every 60 seconds he keeps you on the line counts towards his precious monthly allotment of minutes. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Before dialing, he makes sure the call is of life-or-death importance, and hangs up as quickly as possible, that is, if he ever calls you at all. Then Thad switches to Alltel and adds you to his Circle, without your knowledge or consent.

Now he can call you whenever he pleases and talk to you for as long as he wants and not a single minute counts against him! He gets to talk to you for free! Now instead of calling only for emergencies, he's interrupting your blissful silence right and left, calling you just to, you know, see how you're doing or whatever, see which crooning bobbysoxer you voted for on the television last night, calling you just to…chat. You politely attempt to cut the conversation short, which only devolves into a giggly, back-and-forth volley of "You hang up first," "No you hang up first," which goes on for hours, costing him nothing, but greedily sucking away your valuable minutes like a mosquito at fat camp.

Now imagine all the Thads of the world doing this at the same time, calling whomever 10 friends they choose, regardless of their networks, any time, day or night. For free. Friends, it would be sheer and utter anarchy.

If you wish to just stand there like a modern-day Nero and gangster-rap while our society crumbles into fiery rubble, then by all means, ignore the People Against My Circle Foundation. Just don't come crying to me when the streets of America are filled with filthy, growling, half-naked troglodytes flinging their own refuse at you. But if you, like me, wish to uphold the sacred social contract that binds us to a system of rule by law, then you must act now and join the cause. If not for yourself, please, do it for the children***.

*By "friends" I mean fellow potential litigants in a class-action lawsuit, not people who lend you a cup of sugar or tell you whether you look fat in those dungarees. If you're looking for those kinds of "friends," perhaps this is not the place for you. (If those dungarees do make you look fat, you may be entitled to damages, but that's a different case.)

**Slapper assumes all responsibility for damages incurred to slappee, and will not hold Edward Maxwell Von Houten or PAMCF liable if your mother grounds you or sends you to your room without supper.

***Or the puppies, kittens, dolphins, or whatever other defenseless creatures elicit an emotional response from you.